Related papers: A new air-shower observable to constrain hadronic …
We present a summary of recent tests and measurements of hadronic interaction properties with air showers. This report has a special focus on muon density measurements. Several experiments reported deviations between simulated and recorded…
The characteristics of extensive air showers are sensitive to the details of hadronic interactions at energies and in kinematic regions beyond those tested by human-made accelerators. Uncertainties on extrapolations of the hadronic…
High-energy cosmic rays are observed indirectly by detecting the extensive air showers initiated in Earth's atmosphere. The interpretation of experimental data relies on accurate modeling of the air shower development. Simulations based on…
The energy spectrum of muons produced in air showers depends not only on the properties of the primary particle, but also on the atmosphere. This is because of the competition between decay and interaction of the parent mesons, which…
Muons serve as the best probes of the physics of hadronic interactions in the upper atmosphere because of their simple physics. All the properties of detected muons, such as their energy and angle of incidence, are governed by the…
The IceCube Neutrino Observatory provides the opportunity to perform unique measurements of cosmic-ray air showers with its combination of a surface array and a deep detector. Electromagnetic particles and low-energy muons ($\sim$GeV) are…
The combined data of Fluorescence and Surface Detectors of the Pierre Auger Observatory has recently provided the strongest constraints on the validity of predictions from current models of hadronic interactions. The unmodified predictions…
The hardness of the energy spectrum of neutral pions produced in proton-air interactions at ultra-high energies, above $10^{18}$ eV, is constrained by the steepness of the shower-to-shower distribution of the number of muons in…
Whereas air shower simulations are very valuable tools for interpreting cosmic ray data, there is a long standing problem: is seems to be impossible to accommodate at the same time the longitudinal development of air showers and the number…
Extensive air showers are complex objects, resulting of billions of particle reactions initiated by single cosmic ray at ultra-high-energy. Their characteristics are sensitive both to the mass of the primary cosmic ray and to the details of…
The recent observations of muon charge ratio up to about 10 TeV and of atmospheric neutrinos up to energies of about 400 TeV has triggered a renewed interest into the high-energy interaction models and cosmic ray primary composition. A…
Surface detector arrays are designed to measure the spectrum and composition of high-energy cosmic rays by detecting the secondary particle flux of the Extensive Air Showers (EAS) induced by the primary cosmic rays. Electromagnetic…
The development of an extensive air shower depends not only on the nature of the primary ultra-high-energy cosmic ray but also on the properties of the hadronic interactions. For energies above those achievable in human-made accelerators,…
Extensive air showers produced by the interaction of ultra-high-energy cosmic rays ($E > 10^{18}$ eV) in the Earth's atmosphere provide a challenging yet unique channel to probe hadronic interactions at the 100 TeV center-of-mass energy…
Ultrahigh energy cosmic ray air showers probe particle physics at energies beyond the reach of accelerators. Here we introduce a new method to test hadronic interaction models without relying on the absolute energy calibration, and apply it…
The predictions of hadronic interaction models for cosmic-ray induced air showers contain inherent uncertainties due to limitations of available accelerator data and theoretical understanding in the required energy and rapidity regime.…
Over the last two decades, various experiments have measured muon densities in extensive air showers over several orders of magnitude in primary energy. While some experiments observed differences in the muon densities between simulated and…
The aim of the Pierre Auger Observatory is the investigation of the nature of cosmic ray particles at ultra-high energies. It can simultaneously observe the longitudinal air shower development in the atmosphere as well as particle densities…
The Pierre Auger Observatory, the world's largest observatory of ultra-high-energy cosmic rays (UHECR), offers a unique insight into the properties of hadronic interactions occurring in air showers at energies well above those reached at…
The hybrid design of the Pierre Auger Observatory allows for the measurement of a number of properties of extensive air showers initiated by ultra-high energy cosmic rays. By comparing these measurements to predictions from air shower…